Brainstorming Good Affordable Southeastern Colleges (w/possible Design/Engingeering emphasis)

AustenNut
Wed, 29 Dec 2021 01:35:07 +0000

I appreciate everyone’s feedback and suggestions. As @Thorsmom66 indicated, our focus at this point in time is on saving money for our child’s college expenses. The reason for the exercise in naming schools, however, is to see what schools in today’s dollars might work so we would know how much more to try and budget for college as we’re likely to be a donut family earning too much for significant financial aid but not enough to make huge checks comfortable. But cost is an issue as there are also other things (like retirement) that we need to be saving for.

I’ve looked at NAAB accreditations for architecture, CIDA for interior design, and LAAB for landscape architecture and will continue to review them as the time approaches. Samford, for instance, is currently in the probationary phase to earn its initial NAAB accreditation in architecture. Belmont in Nashville also now has a program. But yes, the big schools do tend to be the best ones for many of our son’s possible fields of interest (VA Tech, Auburn, Clemson). And, as a rare occurrence, Louisiana is at the top of a good list, namely landscape architecture.

If we feel confident that our child will do well at a big state school (i.e. LSU) then we are likely to stick with our original plan of covering COA at our in-state flagship and have our child cover the rest via scholarships should he decide to go elsewhere. The desire to save more money for more expensive alternatives is if we find that our child is unlikely to do well at a big school.

I have been looking at the common data sets and at the average price for families earning $110k+. I started by looking at the average price for that upper range of incomes, but I now suspect (and would appreciate others experience) that I should be looking at how much merit aid is received to get a closer idea of what our costs might be like. Which number have CCers found to be more useful when estimating costs? Of course, I also look at what percentage of students receive merit aid to determine likelihood (for instance, if 97% of students receive merit aid, then I consider it highly likely, whereas if only 4% receive merit aid, then I consider it highly unlikely).